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RINOs Beware. SC County Rules may compel adherence to platform!

By: karenmartin (Diary)  |  August 15th, 2011 at 10:49 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

We are still fighting here in South Carolina for registration by party in order to vote.  So many of our RINO problems in our state are because politicians who are Dems in their core convictions KNOW they cannot get elected running as a Dem, so they register and run as Republicans and the Dems cross over and vote for them.  Or the Dem crossover gives us a weak candidate rather than a strong conservative.  Then we get the maddening consequences of supposed Republicans, such as the Spartanburg Six (Rita Allison, Doug Brannon, Derham Cole, Mike Forrester, Steve Parker, Eddie Tallon) who vote to table and kill a school choice bill that is a Republican platform issue.

What if candidates who want to run as Republicans have to follow the Republican platform in order to get on the ballot?  What if we were able to only field strong conservatives based on their commitment to our platform … that wouldn’t give the Dems anyone BUT a strong conservative to cross over and vote for!

Greenville County has a plan to ensure those very things.  Take a look at this video.  You can bet we’ll keep you up to date on this!

BTW … we are able to talk about this because the tea party and liberty groups in Upstate SC worked very hard at precinct reorganization this year. Harry, founder of RINO Hunt is the County GOP First Vice Chair, Linda of Americans for Prosperity is the GOP County Second Vice Chair, Laurie original tea party activist is the GOP County Third Vice Chair, and the Precinct President and Precinct Executive Committeeman and delegate positions are filled with activist conservatives. Betty, long time conservative Republican and a leading figure in the National Federation of Republican Women is the Greenville GOP County Chair.

This is what we can do when we become involved in the GOP Party through our precincts.

Cross post from The Spartanburg Tea party

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COMMENTS

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  • http://teapartisan.wordpress.com Loren Heal

    All except for the term “RINO”. We are all, I hope, Republicans in name only, adhering to our conservative principles and American values first.

    And even though we all agree to support the platform, none of us place the same exact emphasis on each plank. We may even wish to change the platform, though we support it.

    But for those cases in which a Democrat runs as a Republican only to get elected, I guess I have to shut up and take your word for it.

    Great diary.

  • fpete13527

    nt

  • http://www.spartanburgteaparty.org karenmartin

    …it truly is that way. We see the leaders of our legislature in Columbia, busing folks in to get re-elected. It takes a while to grasp that dynamic, but answers a lot of “huh?” when you see what comes out of Columbia in one of the REDDEST of red states. RINO is not an invective in many cases here in SC, it is an accurate description.

  • sccrenny

    Loren, a platform is an advertisement. It is a list of items that one can infer that a candidate is in agreement with if they run under the party brand. Like buying a car, if the standard features include a V6, disc brakes, air bags, and an automatic transmission one would understandably be upset to buy a standard vehicle and find a 4-cylinder, drum brakes, no air bags (especially when you find that out in a crisis situation!), and you have to change gears.

    Unless a candidate modifies his/her contract in advance by campaigning on the platform items they disagree with or want to change, they are engaging in false advertising to accept the brand name of Republican while having no intentions of pursuing the stated party objectives.

  • concap

    ….

  • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

    As should both of ColdWarrior’s that are currently on the Reco List.

    Karen and CW are two people who are out-in-front leading the charge to actually take the Party and put it into Conservative hands.

    Redstate was founded, as I recall, on the fundamental principle of getting “common folk” involved in Republican Party inner workings. The focus seems to have changed to being a voice of influence in DC, at least based on the current version of “About”, and that’s all well and good but both the real war and the place where the battle will be won or lost is not in DC, it’s in the state Party organizations and South Carolina is the poster state to demonstrate this. As Karen notes, only Republicans get elected in SC and they have some of the worst legislators around – not to mention the poster boy for US Senators who need to be forced to get a job that no decent American would do. And, as it stands now, he’s safe as the day is long. Hopefully Karen’s efforts will fix that.

    At any rate, thank you Karen and ColdWarrior for your great work. You two, and the people you recruit are the ones who are really going to make the difference.

  • acat

    Who or what is this in reply to?

    Neither Scope nor rwm52 have replied to this diary.

    Seems to me, concap, like you’re seeking a confrontation where none is needed. Why is that?

    Mew

  • acat

    This is how we fix the gutless DC wing of the GOP – precinct by precinct.

    This should be front-page and sticky for a week.

    Mew

  • concap

    I have advocating the fact the Dem

  • rightwingmom52

    . . .

  • Aaron Gardner

    Also, you don’t seem to be able to write a legible post.

  • concap

    (and that

  • acat

    Candidate purity matters.
    Voter purity does not.

    Period.

    Mew

  • Aaron Gardner

    All while avoiding the question I asked.

    You aren’t a Republican, this diary is about Republican party operations. Why should I care what you think when you say up front that you aren’t a Republican?

    Don’t bother replying if you don’t intend to answer the question and instead continue to attribute ideas to me that I have never espoused.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    I react badly to the following:

    1. People who try to drag other people into particular threads, whether or not they were actually participating into them. It’s uncouth.
    2. People who tell other people what they’re REALLY thinking. It’s rude.
    3. People with excessively, excessively long .sig threads. It’s tedious.

    Three for three here, dude. Of these, #3 I let slide because it’s just a personal kind of negative reaction, but the other two are getting to be just a little too often present in your comments. If your goal here is to be persuasive, you’re doing it wrong.

    Moe Lane

    PS I am being nice.

  • concap

    not your position and what you can do.

  • concap

    not your position and what you can do.

  • volunteerstate

    Harry is the man !

  • http://redmerrimack.blogspot.com/ charliebravoNH

    I like the system Utah has were you have to get a percentage of the vote at a nominating convention before you get on the primary ballot. Believe it or not Massachusetts has pre primary nominating convention where you have to get above 15 % of the vote from the delegates before your name can be on the primary ballot.

    I wish we had a nominating convention here in NH for the Presidential Primary. We have had too many media darlings on the GOP side win here in the last twenty years.

  • http://teapartisan.wordpress.com Loren Heal

    If I say that I accept and endorse everything in the platform, but in my heart of hearts were not sure we need a balanced budget amendment (I am), would I be a RINO?

    If I agreed with the whole platform but thought maybe we could pull out of, say, Germany and Japan, would I be a RINO?

    What if I’m a full-on social conservative and small government fiscal slasher type, an immigration hawk and support the war on drugs, but thought our defense posture should be limited to defending our own hemisphere (and Israel), not Europe or Asia?

    I could go on, but the question is what set of policy positions, or platform planks, would a candidate have to oppose before the RINO label fits?

    As I said to Karen, only Arlen Specter, Donald Trump, and people like them, who switch parties solely to get elected, should be called RINOs. And even then it’s more useful to point out their actual positions and not fall back to the otherwise undefinable label.

  • cbrice99

    Hi Karen,

    Since you’re active in SC, I wonder if you know who to contact to try to get SC to agree to hold run-off elections for the presidential primary. Without that, we keep getting stuck with duds (Bob Dole, John McCain — need I say more?). And I’m sure this time we’ll be stuck with Romney since the true conservative vote will be split at least a couple of ways, if not more. And since SC is picking the nominee. It just seems foolish with SC playing such an important role, not to have runoffs. I live overseas but am a voter in SC.

    Great work you’re doing.

  • sccrenny

    If you run as a Republican, you have advertised yourself as such. If you disagree with parts of the platform during your campaign, you have at least complied with the “fine print” requirement to stipulate that your opinions differ from the platform. Voters have a chance to take that into consideration in electing you.

    If you have done none of the above and you begin to undermine the pursuit of the Republican platform once you obtain office, you become a suspected RINO (and a fraudulent advertiser). At that point the debate begins among Republicans and you are “put on trial” in the court of opinion.

    One has the choice to run as a Democrat, Independent, or any number of third parties who disagree with a substantial portion of the Republican platform.

    One becomes a widely accepted RINO by public opinion, based on repeatedly undermining the objectives and goals- the platform- of the Republican party while using the party brand to get elected.

    By the way, Arlen Specter was a RINO UNTIL he left the Republican Party.